"Travesties" and "Assassins" "Travesties" at Williamstown and "Assassins" at Berkshire Theatre Festival What if a group of people connected by just one common fact were put together on stage and allowed to interact as they never did in real life? That's the playful what-if that animates both "Assassins" and "Travesties." The two results are wildly different fantasias on this shared premise. In the productions at two Western Massachusetts summer theaters, the Williamstown Theatre Festival and the Berkshire Theatre Festival, in Stockbridge, both are hugely entertaining. The tie that binds the nine principals in Steven Sondheim's musical "Assassins" is that they all shot-or at least shot at-a president of the United States. The connecting thread in Tom Stoppard's play "Travesties" is both more solid and more tenuous: in 1917, at the height of World War I, the Irish novelist James Joyce, the Roumanian founder of the Dada art movement, Tristan Tzara, and the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin were all living in Zurich, in neutral Switzerland. It also draws on-or rather, mercilessly exploits-the fact that in that year, Joyce directed a production of the quintessential English drawing-room comedy, "The Importance of Being Earnest." Stoppard's play is a series of travesties on those two mildly intriguing sets of facts. It's narrated by another real-life figure, Henry Carr, an officer in the British consulate, who acted in Joyce's production. Carr is recalling the story as a doddery old man, and in his leaky memory those long-ago events get scattered and confused, like the nonsense poems Tzara created by cutting up newspaper pages then pulling the words randomly out of a hat. His memoir becomes a hilarious motley of Joyce's stream-of-consciousness, Tzara's whimsical nonsensicality, and Lenin's revolutionary rants, all framed in a surreal paraphrase of Oscar Wilde's play. Gregory Boyd's production rides high on Stoppard's flood of wordplay. His actors attack their giddy roles with abandon, and most of the highjinks work fine. David Garrison is wonderfully snooty as Carr in his younger days, though it's a puzzle why the elder version of this dignified dandy looks like a tramp emerging from one of Samuel Beckett's trash cans. Stephen Spinella gives Joyce an antic charm and an amusingly terrible Irish accent. and Michael Stuhlbarg's Tzara neatly fits the aesthetic bomb-thrower into the mannered cadences of Oscar Wilde. Lynn Collins and Kali Rocha complete the Wildean circle as Gwendolyn and Cecily-disciples of Joyce and Lenin, respectively, but named after the two ingenues in "Earnest." Building on the linguistic excesses of the script, the director has given them a pie-throwing cat fight and a couple of breast-baring scenes that are as funny as they are gratuitous. All three historical figures in "Travesties" are revolutionaries, each of them destined to have a profound influence in his chosen sphere. In 1917, Lenin was heading for Russia to overthrow the capitalist order, Joyce was writing "Ulysses," the novel that would revolutionize 20th-century literature, and Tzara was overturning conventional definitions of art and paving the way for surrealism. In contrast to these world-shakers, the nine assassins in Sondheim's musical merely think that shooting the president will change the world and make them immortal. From John Wilkes Booth, who killed Lincoln partly out of Confederate fervor and partly because his acting career was on the rocks, to John Hinckley, who shot Ronald Reagan to get Jody Foster's attention, these gun-toting losers see themselves as men-and, in two cases, women-with a mission. Their violent acts are aimed at avenging societal wrongs and personal affronts. They are people for whom the American Dream turned out to be a nightmare, and who think a magic bullet will finally make it come true. Timothy Douglas's production, in the intimate Unicorn Theatre, imagines a gun shop where the dissatisfied and downtrodden gather to pick up their pistols. In a series of songs and vignettes, we see the frustrations and defeats, the dreams and delusions that feed their fantasies of righteous violence. For most of them, there's a pathetic need to be recognized or to act out an obsession. Charles Guiteau, a failed author, wants to be an ambassador and shoots James A. Garfield when his application is denied. Lee Harvey Oswald, suicidal over the failure of his marriage and his life, decides to shoot John Kennedy instead of himself. Sam Byck, an unemployed Santa Claus, is enraged that his letters to celebrities go unanswered, so he decides to kill Richard Nixon (chillingly, his unsuccessful plot involved hijacking a plane and flying it into the White House). For some of these assassins, squeezing the trigger is political as well as personal. When Leon Czolgosz takes aim at William McKinley, he's acting for all the oppressed slaves of capitalist industry. Giuseppe Zangara's poverty and bad luck have given him ulcers, and it's that pain more than social outrage that drives him to fire at Franklin Roosevelt's motorcade. Charles Manson's sometime girlfriend, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, and Sara Jane Moore, a bored neurotic housewife, both tried to kill Gerald Ford (of all people), on separate occasions. Here, the librettist, John Wideman, brings them together in a mutual plot that is planned and executed in a series of Chaplinesque misadventures. Some of the musical score, played by pianist Ken Clark, is pure Sondheim. But most of the songs are composed in styles of the period they reflect. The story of John Wilkes Booth is told by a banjo-playing balladeer. Charles Guiteau's song from the gallows is a 19th-century hymn. And John Hinckley and Squeaky Fromme sing to their respective fantasy lovers in a sappy '70s pop duet a la the Carpenters. The Unicorn production sustains a macabre liveliness that keeps the gristly theme and its unsavory characters entertaining without trivializing them. The 15 cast members may look too youthful for some of their roles but they perform with polished skill. "Assassins" was a bit of a flop in its New York debut, but this revival consistently hits the target. "Vita & Virginia", Shakespeare & Company, Lenox, MA "Vita & Virginia," is dynamic, engrossing, intense, spiced with humor that bites or delights—and more—qualities woven throughout the dramatized correspondence between two women whose love affair with language sparks and sustains their 20-year relationship. Tod Randolph as Virginia Woolf and Catherine Taylor-Williams as Vita Sackville-West give bravura performances that keep the audience engaged and enthralled. The fervor of the applause imparted a fraction of the emotional impact generated by the actors' skill at bringing to life these literary trailblazers, both prolific published writers, through the letters they wrote to one another between 1922 and 1941. Taylor-Williams' Vita is suffused with energy, both physical and cerebral. On a stage barely big enough to swing a cat, she struts, glides, wheels, sprawls, and occasionally strikes a mannered pose. In conversational tones, she taps the feelings behind the words Vita wrote more than 60 years ago. As Vita, she is a flapper from her bobbed hair down to her swingy skirts. Her energy never flags. Whereas Randolph's Virginia, although only 40 to Vita's 30, appears decades older—dowdy, dour, wary. At the mercy of bipolar illness most of her life, Randolph's quick, decisive steps capture the ebulliency of the manic moods. When in the anguish of despair, her body sags.. The moment she realizes that Vita's affection for her has progressed from friendship to love, her expressive face reflects surprise and exquisite joy. She blossoms. As important as this affair was to Virginia, in the suicide note she left for her husband, she wrote, "I owe all my happiness to you..." Dan McCleary's directorial debut brings high polish to a multi-faceted gem. Costume Designer Jennifer Halpern's costumes bespeak the period and the personalities. Even in daylight, Lighting Designer Nathan Towne-Smith scores. Sound Designer Jason Fitzgerald shatters tranquility. "The Stillborn Lover" and "The Who's Tommy" at Berkshire Theatre Festival Two contrasting productions exemplify the old and new BTF. The two plays that ran in August at the Berkshire Theatre Festival's 75th anniversary season illustrate the variety of fare on its summer menu and epitomize the difference between BTF's two performance venues. The historic mainstage, where "The Stillborn Lover" is playing, generally holds to mainstream fare and attracts an older, staider clientele, while the intimate Unicorn Theatre appeals to a younger, hipper crowd. "The Stillborn Lover" is Richard Chamberlain's coming-out party. It can't be a coincidence that he's playing a prominent closeted gay man just as his newly published autobiography, "Shattered Love," reveals this longtime TV heartthrob's homosexuality. I can't think of another good reason for bringing on the first professional U.S. production of this creaky ten-year-old Canadian play. Timothy Findley's drama, based loosely on a number of real events in Canadian politics, takes place in the 1970s, when the Cold War still dominated world affairs and drove international policy. The Canadian ambassador to Moscow, Harry Raymond, has been suddenly called home. He and his wife, joined by their grown daughter, are squirrelled away in a secluded country house and kept under watch by two government policemen. Marion Raymond is in the early stages of Alzheimer's-slipping between lucid moments and lost confusion, entertaining rosy memories of the past, then lashing out in angry frustration at her condition and their current situation. It soon transpires that the Raymonds have been unceremoniously recalled because of the murder of a male prostitute in Moscow-someone they knew. The plot revolves around the questions surrounding this murder. Who killed him? Harry? Marion? The KGB? Was it because of jealousy, or blackmail, or Cold War gamesmanship? Stirring this pot of intrigue is Mike Riordan, Harry Raymond's longtime friend, now a powerful politician poised to become Prime Minister-if only he can keep this scandal under control. So the play turns on questions of loyalty-to country, to friendship, to loved ones, and most of all, to one's true self. The play is primarily a study of Harry and Marion. Both have spent their lives squelching their truest impulses in the cause of what they took to be a greater good. For each of them, their deepest love has been compromised or denied-as the playwright puts it, stillborn. The potential of this material is continually sabotaged by the playwright's remarkably clunky stagecraft-a script that reads like a made-for-TV drama with semi-literary pretensions; a play in which two characters go offstage for a crucial conversation that lasts less than a minute; a play where people spend a lot of time telling each other things they already know for the purpose of exposition; a play in which the first-act curtain comes down on a shocking revelation that is no surprise at all. Like the script, Martin Rabbett's production is an odd melange of intrigue, sentiment, and symbolism. He has allowed scenic designer Michael Downs to create a series of sliding wood-and-rice-paper panels-a Japanese house, not a Canadian one, apparently intended to evoke the Raymonds' first diplomatic posting, in their long-lost idealistic youth. And the two episodes of nudity are so self-consciously distracting that they undermine their own dramatic and symbolic purpose. The material is not well served by Richard Chamberlain's performance either. For this desperately self-contained character it's appropriately restrained, but he's so stiff that it's hard to work up any sympathy for the guy. Chamberlain is joined by a well-known trio of his contemporaries. Lois Nettleton, as Marion, gets the most emotional moments in the play, and shows us the most complex character, a woman clinging to the matrimonial bargain she made even as she's losing her grip on life. Keir Dullea, an underappreciated actor, makes the most of his supporting role as the smooth, ruthless politician, and Jessica Walter is smart and acerbic as the quintessential political wife. Jennifer Van Dyck makes a good job of her functional role as the Raymonds' daughter-a sounding board for them and a foil for the two cops who shadow the family. In these two roles, Robert Emmet Lunney is affably sinister as the senior officer and Kaleo Griffith (who looks remarkably like the young Treat Williams) is serviceable in a part that mainly requires him to show off every inch of his well-muscled body. The stage version of "The Who's Tommy" is also ten this year, but unlike "The Stillborn Lover", it's enjoyed great success and numerous productions in the U.S.A. This live edition of the rock opera captures the high spirits and spiritual highs of Pete Townshend's masterpiece far better than Ken Russell's gaudy 1975 pop-art movie version, even while reversing the outcome of the original. Here, the deaf, dumb and blind kid who becomes a pinball wizard and then a cult hero ends up renouncing his messianic role in favor of normalcy and individuality, only to be turned on by his followers who would rather be slaves to a charismatic icon. Jared Coseglia's production in Stockbridge is anything but a carbon copy of the Broadway version and its touring offshoots. It's a completely reenvisioned staging-not as technologically spectacular, perhaps, but equally satisfying ... and just as loud. Instead of the original's postwar English setting, this one is transplanted and updated to the day after tomorrow in America-a bleak, violent place peopled with bored, angry teenagers, where the grownups are grasping, clueless, or just irrelevant. Coseglia also changes the conclusion yet again, giving "Tommy" a bleak, violent end that is chillingly effective and deeply cynical. The most interesting revision here is the presentation of Tommy himself. While the autistic child stares sightlessly into a mirror and silently endures sexual and physical abuse, an alter-ego figure stands above the action, feeling his pain and sounding his thoughts. Cory Grant has the looks, the voice, the sexual energy and the steel-and-leather getup of a heavy-metal star, and he plays the role like a bewildered but volatile Frankenstein costumed by Aerosmith. Some other performers I particularly enjoyed in the dynamic young cast were Christopher Mowod as a sadistic adolescent headbanger; Stephanie Girard as Tommy's Barbie-lookalike mother; James Barry as his ineffectual father; Dalane Mason as his slimy uncle; and Thay Floyd as a stupendously outrageous Acid Queen, with the emphasis on queen. In Paul Hudson's set design, the small stage is dominated by a strange rusted-iron cylinder that seems to have crashed through the wall into young Tommy's suburban house. It's apparently meant to represent the chaotic energy that possesses the child. In another thematic image, all the posters, banners and newspaper headlines that appear onstage are written backwards, so that we are seeing the world through the same mirror that Tommy stares into so profoundly. The tight six-piece band, led by musical director Ken Clark, achieves the raw energy of the Who's original recording more successfully than the more lavish Broadway arrangements. And with the puzzling exception of conventional chorus-line choreography by Julian Alexander Barnett, who also plays the teenage Tommy (and looks remarkably like the young Gary Oldman), this production thrillingly captures the musical passion, intellectual adventurousness and guitar-smashing rebellion of this rock'n'roll monument. |
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